There was high drama on Tuesday evening when it was announced that 12 “unwilling farmers” will receive the titles to land within the Tata Motors small car factory site at Singur by late evening as a start to the process of returning land in the area. The Hooghly district administration, however, asserted that no such move would be initiated on the day. The clarification from the district authorities came shortly after...

Armed policemen accompanying officials return to their makeshift camps Congress legislators to raise issue during Assembly session Chief Secretary: administration trying to carry out peaceful Land Acquisition As the agitation continued to intensify over the Posco steel project, the Jagatsinghpur district administration on Tuesday did not acquire any land for the venture but continued the construction of a boundary wall on the land acquired earlier. While senior leaders belonging to the Opposition Congress and the...

Rather than shutting its doors on ‘civil society’, the government should be thanking its stars that the latter wants to make law, not war. Distributing tee-shirts with this slogan would be a better use of the government’s ‘hearts and minds’ funds than the integrated action plan to counter Naxals, or the army’s tourism trips to Pune for Kashmiri schoolgirls. The UPA regime has been unprecedented for the spate of legislation that...

The Supreme Court on Monday told the government to dump the archaic Land Acquisition Act to prevent Nandigram-like violent protests in every state, sounding the warning that it would step in to safeguard public interest if the authorities failed to do the needful. "The perspective has to change. The public purpose clause in the 1894 Act must go. If the government does not do it, then this court has to act....

-PTI   To step in to prevent “more Nandigrams” The Supreme Court on Monday criticised the Uttar Pradesh government for acquiring prime agricultural land to build luxury flats in Greater Noida and questioned the invoking of an urgency clause that bars farmers from raising objections. It noted it would step in to prevent “more Nandigrams.” “Whose residential use are these flats for? Who is building them? What are the prices? We want to...